Category: Vegetarian

Since we’re in the middle of autumn and all things spiced, I have another snack for you. But instead of pumpkin spice, chai spice is the star! I love having roasted nuts around as a quick snack, so these fall flavors are perfect. With honey as a natural sweetener, you can feel pretty good about indulging in a (more than a) a few handfuls of these nuts at a time!

honey chai-spiced roasted nuts

For a quick and easy treat, toss walnuts with warming chai spices, roast ’em up and get snacking! Walnuts are my favorite but almonds, pecans or cashews would work just as well. I also added in a mixture of sesame, flax and chia seeds that I had on hand and those could certainly be omitted if you don’t have them available.

Preheat oven to 325° and line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk the egg white until frothy. Pour in the honey and whisk again until both are combined, then add in the chai spices and mix again. Add walnuts and mixed chia, flax and sesame seeds (if using) to honey and egg white mixture. Fold nuts into mixture with a spatula until completely covered.

Pour nut mixture onto prepared baking sheet and spread evenly, making sure they’re in one layer. Sprinkle liberally with vanilla salt. Put mixture into oven and roast for approximately 30 minutes, stirring once or twice. Remove from oven and set aside to cool. Keep in a

Sprinkle on the vanilla salt.

Return the nuts to oven for another 8-10 minutes. Remove from oven and immediately place into glass jars for storage as they’ll harden while they cool. Will keep in an airtight container for about 2 weeks.

When I have the time and motivation, roasted chickpeas are a snack staple in our house. If you didn’t think you could eat two whole cans of chickpeas by yourself, this snack may prove you wrong. Lucky for me, I have a toddler who loves them just as much as I do so they’re the perfect thing to share.

The flavor combo is adapted from NYT’s chicken shawarma recipe (which, by the way, is SO good) and I wanted to try it out on these little guys. And guess what? It works!

So we’ll keep this short and sweet. Certainly pizza is one of the most customizable dishes you can create but I am loving this combo and have made this exact pizza probably three or four times in the past few weeks. And the fact that I only have one picture to accompany this post means that we promptly devoured this pizza pretty much as soon as it came out of the oven!

Some would say pasta is the ultimate comfort food and I am not here to disagree. Sometimes it’s as easy as throwing pasta in some boiling water and tossing the noodles with a jar of pre-made sauce and calling it a day. Though it may be intimidating at first, making sauce from scratch is not that difficult and if you have the inclination to do so, it really is worth the extra effort.

This is a take on a puttanesca sauce, which includes the briny tang of capers and Kalamata olives, however, with a simple pomodoro sauce in mind, I added a bit of ghee (or you could use a pat of butter) to really round out its flavor and then stirred in about a ½ cup of pasta water to make the sauce cling to the noodles. You can pump up the nutrition a bit by using whole wheat spaghetti or even zucchini noodles or toss in some extra veggies such as squash, broccoli or spinach. This time, I just wanted a simple pasta dish with a sauce that I could call my own.

spaghetti with olives & capers

Whole-wheat spaghetti tossed in a slurp-able sauce and punctuated with the briny tang of olives and capers really doesn’t get much better! Unless you top your bowl with Parmesan cheese and basil…and then it does.

Increase the heat to medium and season with kosher salt. Then add in the pureed tomatoes, kalamata olives, capers, olive brine, caper brine and sugar. Cook, stirring occasionally, until sauce thickens slightly and flavors come together about 20 minutes. Remove pan from heat and stir in basil sprigs and set aside.

Meanwhile, bring a large pot of water to a boil. Season with kosher salt and cook spaghetti, stirring occasionally until about 2 minutes before noodles are tender. Reserve about ½ a cup of pasta water while draining pasta.

Discard basil in skillet and warm sauce over high heat. Stir in pasta water to loosen sauce, and bring to a boil. Add noodles and cook, stirring so sauce coats the pasta, about 2 minutes. Remove pan from heat and add ghee and ¼ cup of parmesan cheese. Toss together until cheese and ghee melt.